These digital narratives were all extremely different in concept and in execution. Jackson's "My Body" laid out a combination of drawings and text, which told bits and pieces of a story that lacked an overall narrative. It seemed impossible to read every excerpt because once a link was clicked, the links I didn't click were lost behind. Eventually I would recognize a viewed page because the links appeared purple from clicking. I would call this a remix hyper text narrative, because it had home-drawings along with original thought, which was set up in a hyper-text narrative format. "Six Sex Scenes" was more of a coming of age digital journal, in which anonymous confession after confession is on display for the viewer. Like Jackson's, it was hard to get a sense of thoroughly navigating through the whole thing as the pages seemed to grow exponentially. Laporta's "Distance" was very different from the first two, as a clear path was present from start to finish. Only one link per page made it easy to read all of the information in the correct order. I would also consider this a hypertext narrative with a diary undertone since the narrator was confessing how they felt about online chatting and how humans are “artifacts in motion becoming pixels on the screen”. I liked this one because I didn’t feel like I was missing anything. The Redridinghood was just bizarre if you ask me, I didn’t understand the story line but I did like the level of interactivity. Certain scenes had roll over images which gave different options for chosing your own path. Also you could let Red sleep or wake her up and have her carry on. Options like this give the viewer the power to control the fate of the narrative. The redridinghood narrative was a remix of a traditional fairy tale but I’m not really sure what the final goal was supposed to be and I didn’t find it very effective.
It is easy to blur the lines between autobiography and fiction because we do not know these authors, even though we are given a name they still feel anonymous. It is unclear if the author is talking about their own thoughts or feelings or if they are using someone else’s. It is easy to say whatever you want on the internet because you are hiding behind a computer and no one can judge you to your face. Jackson’s article was more G-rated which may or may not cause the viewer to believe it was truthful, whereas the Six Sex Scenes was more risqué and left more room for fabrication. In the end we will never know what’s true and what is fiction, but does it matter?
The link strategies mostly stressed me out because I didn’t feel like I was getting the whole story, but perhaps some of the authors wanted the viewers to chose their own paths so each individual had an individual experience taking in the information. The Distance narrative was the only one with a clear path, which I personally liked, and the last one’s lack of path left me unsatisfied.
The only other digital narratives I’ve seen are the ones we made in Digital Art 2, and most of them had a pretty clear path from the beginning to the start. If there were several paths it was simple to go back and see the different outcomes, which seems like a personal choice of the author.
Jackson’s narrative didn’t seem like fantasy, but it did have an element of imagination and it seemed to ramble on, sort of like a little kid would in his/her mind. I thought Laporta’s narrative did not have a clear distinction of whether it was supposed to be her or not but obviously she has had some experience with online chatting or she would not write about it. Whether it was about her or about a made-up character, she still seemed to be portraying some anger or sadness about the whole situation. I don’t think it matters because the ending message is clear (humans are becoming artifacts….). I think Little Red Ridinghood is a story everyone knows so it is a safe parallel to use in a narrative, however even though I know the story of redridinghood I could not understand the modern story.
I don’t think these narratives need to necessarily fall into a literature or visual/performing arts category. They are their own new category and cannot fall into either or because they all have elements of both literature and art.
** for some reason when I copy and paste from Word it creates weird spaces within the text, sorry if this is distracting
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